Advances in patient care have helped to dramatically increase patients' lifespans and quality of life through the development of more effective treatments, medications, and medical technologies. Despite these advances, a leading cause of medical patient fatalities is accidental patient non-compliance with pharmaceutical dosage programs. For example, many patients often forget to take their medications, take too many doses of their medications, take the wrong medications, or take their medications in an incorrect manner. Additionally, some patients even forget to fill their prescriptions in the first place. As a result, taking medications in a non-compliant fashion often leads to a prolonging of disease-related symptoms, an increase in serious complications, unnecessary additional medical visits, higher medical costs, and possibly even death.
People often use the assistance of calendars, physicians, other people, their own memory, and other methods to help remind them to take a particular medication or to help verify that they took the medication according to the proper regimen. However, such methods often fail to adequately remind the patient to take their medications on a regular basis or in an effective manner. Such methods further fail to verify that the patient actually took the medication appropriately.